CVE-2022-49964
BaseFortify
Publication date: 2025-06-18
Last updated on: 2025-11-14
Assigner: kernel.org
Description
Description
CVSS Scores
EPSS Scores
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Meta Information
Affected Vendors & Products
| Vendor | Product | Version / Range |
|---|---|---|
| linux | linux_kernel | 6.0 |
| linux | linux_kernel | 6.0 |
| linux | linux_kernel | From 5.15.160 (inc) to 5.16 (inc) |
Helpful Resources
Exploitability
| CWE ID | Description |
|---|---|
| CWE-NVD-CWE-noinfo |
Attack-Flow Graph
AI Powered Q&A
Can you explain this vulnerability to me?
This vulnerability is in the Linux kernel's arm64 cacheinfo code, where a signed error value returned by acpi_find_last_cache_level() is incorrectly assigned to an unsigned variable fw_level. This causes the number of cache leaves to be calculated as a very large incorrect value, leading to warnings and potential issues during memory page allocation (__alloc_pages). The fix involved changing fw_level to a signed integer and properly handling error returns early.
How can this vulnerability impact me? :
The incorrect assignment can cause the system to miscalculate cache levels, resulting in warnings and potential instability or malfunction during memory allocation in the kernel. This could affect system reliability or performance on affected arm64 Linux systems.
How can this vulnerability be detected on my network or system? Can you suggest some commands?
This vulnerability can be detected by checking for the specific kernel warning message related to __alloc_pages in the system logs. Look for warnings similar to: "WARNING: CPU: 0 PID: 1 at mm/page_alloc.c:5407 __alloc_pages+0x74/0x314" which indicate incorrect cache leaves calculation due to this issue. You can use the command 'dmesg | grep __alloc_pages' or 'journalctl -k | grep __alloc_pages' to find such warnings in the kernel logs.
What immediate steps should I take to mitigate this vulnerability?
The immediate mitigation step is to update the Linux kernel to a version that includes the fix for this vulnerability, where fw_level is changed to a signed integer and errors from init_cache_level() are handled properly. Until then, monitoring for the warning messages and avoiding workloads that trigger heavy cache topology initialization may reduce impact.